Search engine optimization—a.k.a. SEO—is often held up as a must-follow principle to build your company's web presence. But Ken Sundheim, CEO of KAS Placement Executive Search, discovered a dark side: more attention from the outside can harm service on the inside.

I was born a very obsessive person. Everything I do in business and life, I do it to whatever extent needed to ensure success. Usually this approach has worked well for me; it’s certainly allowed my company to grow and become prosperous.

But being so driven is not always a good quality—in fact, there was a brief period of time when this mentality almost killed my business and, ironically, the threat came from the great search engine optimization (SEO) results on my company's website.

About a year into starting my company KAS Placement—a recruiting firm that focuses on the executive recruitment of sales and marketing personnel—I knew that I had to market and attract new customers to succeed.

I remember reading my first article on search engines and search engine optimization. I found it fascinating, so I went out and hired an SEO firm for a lot of money to take care of this for me. About two months into the relationship, I knew that they were not competent enough to make the campaign successful and I cut ties.

Be careful what you wish for

At this point, I began doing our SEO myself. I found that I loved the writing, I enjoyed reading the articles, and I enjoyed the media aspect; I embraced the challenge that is the Google algorithm, and I became very good at it over the years.

Then, about two years ago, I began doing more work in the media, which only compounded my SEO power—and suddenly, I found my company website ranked across the board.

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